The Telegraph’s abortion clinic investigation will yet again lead to searching
questions about the watchdog charged with monitoring them, the Care Quality
Commission.

The quango, which was established in 2009, is the official watchdog for health and social care services in England, including abortion clinics.

Yet in the three years since its creation, the CQC has faced sustained criticism over its performance.

Seven months into its existence, Baroness Young, the CQC’s chairman, resigned in December 2009 after Basildon Hospital in Essex was exposed for having filthy wards and a high death rate despite being rated as “good” by the regulator just a month before.

Cynthia Bower, the regulator’s chief executive, was appointed on a salary of £195,000 a year.

She ran West Midlands strategic health authority, which had oversight of Stafford hospital, where a long history of poor care caused hundreds of patients to die between 2005 and 2008.

The quango faced questions last year after it emerged that residents at a care home were being abused. The abuse had previously been reported to the regulator, which failed to act on a whistle-blower’s “grave” concerns about the behaviour of staff.

The CQC admitted that it had made an “unforgivable error of judgment” after BBC’s Panorama filmed horrific abuse at the residential hospital, Winterbourne View.

There have been increasing concerns about CQC’s capacity for overseeing NHS hospitals and care homes, leading to claims the regulator is not “fit for purpose”. Ministers are thought to be growing alarmed by its failings and are poised to intervene.

Last September the Prime Minister endorsed a critical report by the health select committee, which accused the

regulator of neglecting its core duty of scrutinising patient care in favour of bureaucratic “registration” of care providers.

MPs said the regulator had taken its “eye off the ball”, although they acknowledged unrealistic expectations had been placed on the body.

The creation of the CQC followed the abolition of three bodies covering health, mental health and social care.

The idea was that hospitals, care homes, GPs and private sector groups would be assessed against a common set of standards to ensure they were fit to provide a service.

Its funding was reduced from £240 million a year to £160 million – leading to claims it may be suffering from a shortage of resources.

However, MPs have said the CQC did not do enough to highlight and rectify the problems it was facing.

For example, it took the regulator eight months to fill 70 posts once it was given permission to do so.

This meant it allowed the number of inspections it was carrying out to plummet as the process of registration was rolled out.

The number of inspections fell from nearly 7,000 from October 2009 to March 2010 to just over 2,000 for the same period the following year.

In its annual report last year, the commission claimed it carried out 15,220 inspections and reviews in the year ending March 2011. It has now admitted that there were 7,368.